"This book is the first attempt to treat the problem of revelation outside the Qur’an in Islam. It stresses the essentially unitive cheracter of the Early Muslim Understanding of diverse modes of divine revelation and inspiration, whreas previous work has emphasided Muslim theological disctinctions between Qur’an and Hadith, divine word and Prophetic word. It is argued here

(1) that such distinctions were relatively unimportant during the first 150 years of Islam ; (2) that the early community, whose piety is mirrored in the Hadith, viewed the Quranic revelations and the word of Muhammad as part of the same whole, the same "Prophetic- revelatory" event ; and(3) that tere exist in the early sources scattered but ample materials tahat reflect this unitive view of Revelation and the Prophet"